For a long time, people have been asking me to put the poems and pieces I have written about living after Hannah died, all together in one place. So it seems fitting in the year of her 10th anniversary to do this. My hope is that knowing you are not alone will give you comfort and that when despair comes, you will find hope in these words.Martine

A long short timeTen years have passed since Hannah died.One hundred and twenty months.Five hundred and twenty weeks.It seems such a little time.It seems such a long, long time.

And my world is a completely different place,because she lived,because she died.

A world of strangers came into my life and left.A world of friends disappeared.The bereaved parents came...and stayed through thick and thin.

I began to write.I found new work for my heart and hands.And long dark night gave way to dawn.

And still the days roll on,with Hannah in my heart,without her in my life.

One hand full.The other empty.

Baby girl,I hold you gently.

And the tears came,And I cried for days.And I was afraid the tears would never stop.And they stopped...but then they started again.And I learned how much I feared my pain.And I learned how much my friends feared my pain.And I learned how there are seasons to my grief.And I learned that trying to make myself stop doesn't work.And I became too tired to fight the tears.And I floated in my ocean of grief.And I did not drown.And I kept on looking for someone or something to hold onto.And I found my self.And I said to my self, 'I will not give up on you.''I will hold onto you.'And I am still here...

Last night it was important for me to go to the hospital to visit someone I love who is very ill. As we waited to go in to the room, a tiny baby in an incubator was rushed past us. Suddenly, I was right back in that time when my daughter Hannah died eight years ago. The same hospital, the same corridors, the same waiting and waiting, not knowing what was going to happen and when. The waiting seemed to last forever.

Hannah would have been eight last Sunday. I couldn't figure out how I was feeling. Empty was the only word I had. But last night, in that same hospital, I figured it out. Right now, I am angry. So angry. Hannah never had a fighting chance.The medical knowledge that might have saved her life is just not commonly available. When I say this, it is not about blame but a simple statement of the reality.But as I saw that tiny baby all I wanted to do was roll back the years and have someone, anyone, give Hannah that fighting chance that she never had. I wanted to hold her in my arms and will her heart to beat and her lungs to breathe. I wanted to bring her home in my arms and not in a box. I wanted to wake up this morning and hear her voice and comb her hair. All the things I cannot do...

I have learned that no peace comes from fighting these natural feelings. So down I went into the anger and the pain. And up I came again in the certain knowledge that Hannah WILL be remembered. Her name will sit proudly in our family tree. She will be recognised for the gift she was and is to us. We will not compound the pain of her death by silence and secrecy. Hannah is my daughter. Yes she died. But she also lived and she will not be forgotten.

Grief is no stranger to me since I live every day with the absence of my daughter Hannah. I have learned some things about grief which I would like to try to put into words today. Whatever I say, please know that I have a depth of compassion for you, my reader, for your losses. In the beginning, I think we all fight our grief. As if somehow by fighting it, we can prevent the loss of our loved one. Many of us are also terrified of grief, fearing if we 'give in' to our grief we will never come out again or that we will go insane. We can get stuck in this. I certainly did when Hannah died. I needed to say aloud 'Hannah died' over and over again to begin to take it in. In Irish communities world wide, this need is honoured in the custom of the wake and the ritual of receiving condolences. Bereaved people tell the story of how their loved one died over and over again. And in the telling, they begin to take it in and slowly accept the new reality of their lives.

Time moves on and for some, grief dulls from a sharp pain to a bearable companion. But for others this does not happen. The sharp pain goes on and on, and feels absolutely unbearable. I reached that point myself in grieving the loss of Hannah. As I looked on my pain, with curious compassion, I began to see that I had a belief that not being in this pain meant disloyalty to Hannah. In other words, if I was happy, that meant that I was being disloyal to Hannah. No wonder my pain did not ease! I looked at this belief and gradually I began to see that it wasn't true. I could love Hannah and miss her and begin to enjoy my life again. My enjoyment of life was not a mark of disloyalty to my beloved daughter. And my grief began to ease.

I still have sad days. I still have times when waves of grief wash over me. But now I am not afraid of them. I have these feelings because I love Hannah and I miss her. I enter into the feelings and they pass.

What I learned from this process, is that when grief becomes stuck, unbearable and unending there is always an unhelpful belief running the show. I experienced this in myself and also in my work with others. Every day now I help people to let go of beliefs that do not serve them. I cannot take grief away since it is human to grieve for those we love. But I can and do help people to find rewarding ways to live their lives again after loss.

Mother's Day is always bittersweet for me. I am so grateful to be a Mom to two daughters who are alive and well. I watch them growing, becoming their own people and I learn so much from them.

But I am also an invisible Mom. My daughter Hannah died in 2004. Hannah died just before birth as a result of what is called a cord accident. These are such innocous words for such a shocking, shocking death. Hannah is one of millions of invisible babies dying every day in our world in spite of modern medicine. On Monday, Hannah's heart was beating strong and clear. On Friday, her heart had stopped.

Research into the causes of stillbirth is so low down on the funding agenda that it barely gets a look in. It is far more common than what used to be called Cot Death. As many as one in 30 babies in the developing world die just before or at birth. In Australia alone, stillbirth, is the third largest cause of death. Ground breaking research is taking place see International Stillbirth Alliance but even doctors and midwives are unaware of the research.

We live in a world of invisible babies..and invisible mothers. If today you are an invisible mother through failed fertility treatment, miscarriage, stillbirth or forced adoption, my heart goes out to you. I will be thinking of Hannah and I will be thinking of you. If you are an adult who has been prevented from finding your mother, I will be thinking of you.

Today with my whole heart and every fibre of my being, I ask this of you.If you can help a mother and child to be reunited by giving information to someone PLEASE do it. If you care for expectant mothers, PLEASE, find out all you can about the prevention of stillbirth. If your friend is an invisible mother, PLEASE find a way to acknowledge her and her baby today. Visit, text, write a letter or a card. People think they are upsetting us by 'reminding' us of our babies.

I will tell you a secret. We NEVER forget our babies. We think of them every day. We walk around every day carrying the absence of our babies. Every birthday, every Christmas, every Mother's Day and Father's Day we think of them. We think how old they would be now if they were still with us. We wonder would they have been quiet or boisterous. We wonder would they have liked Barney or Bear in the Big Blue House. We NEVER EVER forget. This is OUR Truth.

Some things are easier to let go of than others.The hardest thing I ever had to let go of was all dreams of mothering my daughter Hannah.Hannah was born and died in 2004.Her birth was long anticipated.I had waited 10 years.I was in the process of closing down my counselling practise to spend all my time with my new baby.I had bought new baby clothes for her.I had washed and ironed all the baby clothes I had saved from when my 10 year old was a baby.My friend had given me a cot and a buggy.I was ready.

Then Hannah died.

Suddenly I had to say goodbye to Hannah.And I had to say goodbye to all my dreams.The funeral process helped me to say goodbye to Hannah.But much later, I had to say goodbye to my dreams of mothering Hannah.As time passed I realised that I was skirting around that dreadful pain.So I gathered her pictures and those baby clothes,I played the song 'In the arms of the angels' by Sarah Mc Loughlin,and I cried the unpretty tears.Alone, because I couldn't cry in front of others, I wailed and screamed.I stormed around my house.I argued with my fate aloud.I went down and down and down into my grief until I felt empty and hollowed out.I faced the stark reality that Hannah was gone and she was never coming back.I looked at my life which had been bleached of all joy and meaning.I realised that fighting this reality would drive me insane.I realised I could become one of the walking dead.I realised I had a choice.I resolved then and there that somehow I would find a way or make a way to crawl back out again.I began to accept 'that which I could not change.'And over the following weeks and months I learned that I could soothe my pain with simple activities like walking on the beach or writing down my thoughts and feelings.But I needed to do those things EVERY DAY.Every day I had to get up and make a decision to do something, anything which gave me some pleasure.Even when I didn't feel like it, I had to do something.There was a huge effort involved in this.But one evening, I could see that there had been no effort that day.I had absorbed the habit.It had become something I did like brushing my teeth or combing my hair.I didn't have to think about it.And I was grateful.

Now this doesn't mean that grief cannot ambush me even still.But I stand before you now a bereaved mother, AND a woman who has joy and meaning in her life again.I stand before you certain in the knowledge that if you go down and down into the heart of your grief and loss something amazing happens. You find an empty space. And you find that you have a choice. You have a choice to seek out those things that soothe and heal.Only by trial and error will you find what works best for you.But if you persist, you will find what works for you.There will be many days when you feel discouraged.There will be days when you feel that you are wasting your time.There will be days when you are so angry that all you want to do is break things.But if you persist, you will find your way.

There is a strength inside you that you do not see because you feel so frail and vulnerable.You can uncover your strength.If you would like some help to do that you will find suggestions in the Happy Book which is currently on sale at cost price.

There is a lot said about gratitude, how important it is to make it a habit in our lives. I have to agree. But I also know too well how hard it can be to be grateful at certain times in our lives. When my daughter Hannah died, and for a long time afterwards, I could not feel grateful. Saying I was grateful would have been a lie. Life was so bleak. My dreams were shattered and I could see no way forward. It was a terrible way to live. One day I woke up and simply knew that I could no-longer carry on like this, grey day following grey day. I had to do something. It had to be honest and it had to work for me.I thought about the gratitude journals that so many people were talking about at the time. I couldn't stomach the notion. However, in a moment of bone honesty, I realised that I was having moments of simple pleasure. They didn't last and they weren't profound but they were there. I took real pleasure in a good cup of coffee in the morning. I enjoyed putting freshly ironed sheets on my bed. I enjoyed watching the robin who sat on my clothesline almost every morning. So I began my 'enjoyment journal.' Every night, I sat down and wrote a list which began with the words 'these 3 things I enjoyed today......' In the beginning it was often difficult to find even 3 things I had enjoyed. But gradually, as the days passed I began to find more and more little pleasures. Sometimes they even joined up to make a bigger pleasure!Maybe today, gratitude is difficult for you. So just stop! Don't even try to do it! Don't give yourself yet another thing to feel bad about! Instead, maybe you could start with 'these 3 things I enjoyed today...'

What happens when our view of the world becomes fractured?What happens when there is an event in our lives which mangles the old way we saw life, people and even ourselves?We panic.We try to cling to the way it was.But sometimes we are unable to cling, too shocked to panic.Instead we fall into 'not knowing.' 'Not knowing' is not such a bad place...It brings gifts, if we can allow ourselves to have them.'Not knowing' slows down the pace.If I don't know what to do then I cannot rush into action.If I do not rush into action, maybe I will avoid an action which would not be good for me.Maybe my old way of thinking no longer serves me and the person I am becoming.

Maybe this chaos I experience is an opportunity in disguise.

However I see it, I am being moved on to another stage.I can fight it but I will only tire myself out.I could let the tide take me.I could just ride the wave and let it's energy take me into the unknown.I could look around with curiosity and marvel at the sights.I could do all this... and maybe this time I will...

There is a rhythm in everything.A heartbeat.A breath.A life.Sometimes it takes some timeto find our own right rhythm.Sometimes it helps to stand back and gaze kindly on our busy selves.And wait in quiet expectationfor the stillpoint...emerging.

Hope, fragile and precious returned. And my heart opened up again gently quietly silently. And I felt at one with the Earth and all that is, again. And I danced to the silent music.

It's hard to let the light in when we are blaming ourselves for the death of our babies.The secret that we all share is that we all do it.'Maybe my baby would still be here if I hadn't lifted that box/taken part in that exercise class/eaten that soft cheese/had that glass of wine/had sex that night.....'I haven't met a Mom who hasn't asked herself these questions.We replay the day we discovered that our babies died over and over in our minds.We replay the days leading up to that day.We search for a reason,and when we can't find one we blame ourselves.

And because we don't speak of this,because we can't speak of this,our self blame festers inside us and does not heal.

Many of us have pushed our self blame down so far,that we cannot reach it,or don't even know that we are doing it.

If you are feeling hopeless now, please know you are not alone.But no matter how hopeless you feel, we can begin to let the light in.

If you are ready to let the light in, I suggest that you take a single sheet of paper and a pen.Close your eyes and remember a time in your life when you felt loved or full of love for another.Then open your eyes and begin writing with this sentence,'My friend blames herself for the death of her baby because she.........''She tells herself that she should have......'Keep writing until you have to stop or there is nothing left to say.And know that I honour you and the courage it took for you to do this.

When you are ready, take another sheet of paper.Write to your friend and give her all the support and understanding that is in you.Pour out your love on her.Acknowledge her courage in speaking the unspeakable.Tell her the truth.If you are afraid of her anguish,if you feel helpless and useless in the face of her pain, tell her that too.If you don't know what to say, write that down.But all the while pour out your love on her.

Now every time you blame your self for what you couldn't control,remember those loving words.(You will probably need to do this many times.)But be assured that there is no pain in the world that is not eased by persistent love.And you can give this love to your self,although it is not easy,and it takes persistence,and you may feel silly,and uncomfortable.

But be assured that there is no pain in the world that is not eased by persistent love.Martine

Let's tell the truth!It's really hard.At first, we simply can't.We are devastated, exhausted and in shock.Later again we don't want to...We don't want to smile/pretend/be brave.Whatever we call it, we simply don't want to do it.

As time moves on we struggle with different thoughts and feelings.We are often afraid to trust life or ourselves again.Many feel that it would be disloyal to the loved one to find pleasure again.Others feel responsible in some way for the death of the loved one.(This is particularly true for mothers of babies who died through miscarriage or stillbirth.)Sometimes we are unconsciously punishing ourselves.Sometimes we are afraid of the rage that lurks inside us.More of us are pushed into what people call 'finding closure.'Many, many of us feel bad because we still feel sad after X amount of time has passed.We tell our selves we should be better by now.

It helps to know which place we have become stuck in.It is important to do this with lorry loads of compassion for ourselves.It is vital to do this without judgement or condemnation in our hearts.Then when we know what thought/judgement/self blame is hurting us,the only important question to ask is,'What would love have me do?'

Thoughts dried up.I sit in the silence.A stone was thrown in the pool of my life.Months ago.So I sit.And watch the ripples spread.Wider and wider.I silently witness.What cannot be changed.Even while I am changed.I rest.In the peace of this place.A gateway.Into the unknown.Soon I will get up and go there.But not just yet.

Hannah is never far from my thoughts at Xmas. She is in my heart and in the empty space at my table. She has a tiny stocking on my Xmas tree. Loving her and living without her took me on a journey From out of the darkness. Every Xmas I have a day where I spend some time alone. I mourn her absence. I celebrate the gift she is to me. And I remember... I remember every precious moment of her short life. I remember all the pain after she was gone.I marvel that I wrote a Happiness Book after she died. I see how far that I have come,and I think about what being Hannah's Mom means to me.

I do know what it is like to wake in the morning and then realise that she is gone,your beloved daughter is gone.And a yawning chasm opens before you and you fall in.

And you walk because you cannot sit still.And you sit because you cannot walk.And you cry because you cannot stop.And you don't cry because you are numb. And you clean because you see dirt everywhere.And the dust settles because nothing matters anymore.And you keep thinking 'what if...'And you think 'if only...'And you think 'I will never again...'And you go round and round in circles in your mind.And you know the madness of this grief.And your arms ache to hold her just one more time.

And the funeral arrangements distract you for a time.You want to show every last ounce of your love for her.You want it to be beautiful for her,because there will be no sixteenth, no eighteenth, no graduation, no wedding, and no grandkids.And you spiral into a howl,silent or loud.And you know that nothing will ever be the same again.

Did you ever wonder what is it all about?I do sometimes.I wonder why the wicked seem to prosper,and good people seem to have such a bloody hard time.I wonder why beloved babies die too soon.I wonder why some young people feel so hopeless,that they take their own lives.I wonder why men and women kill each other over a piece of ground.I wonder why people enslave people.I wonder why people use people.I wonder why hearts full of love are snuffed out by hatred.

The Wave of Light will go around the world this weekend as all of us bereaved parents remember our babies. I will be thinking of you as you will be thinking of me. And all of us will be remembering our beloved babies. We will mourn how little time we had with them. We will mourn the things we were never able to do with them. Some of us will rejoice that we had them with us, even for just a little while. Many of us are still in too much pain to even countenance that thought. But wherever you are in your grief this weekend, you are not alone. There are millions of us. We walk alongside you. In homes, in every country of the world, we will be lighting candles. These candles will not bring our babies home. But my hope is that the light will bring you home to you... the you that has survived somehow,the you that is utterly changed,the you that is precious,in and of yourself,and to those who love you,the you that can find a way to carry on...With love to you all, my companions on this journey,Martine

We grow strong when we go down deep into ourselves and find something that matters so much to us that we cannot walk away. We do not want to walk away. We choose not to walk away. We grow strong when we decide we may not know how to do something but we will put one foot in front of the other until the deed is done.We grow strong when we face a seemingly insurmountable obstacle and we keep on going.We grow strong when we speak our truth even if our words are unwelcome and people try to crush us and put us down.I grew strong in my father's house. His word was law and disension was brutally quashed. I grew stronger when my first marriage ended and divorce Irish style took 9 years.I grew stronger still when my daughter Hannah died. Many times I believed myself weak. Many times I wanted to give up. But I learned that strength lay in persistence.

I never thought I could be happy again after my daughter Hannah died in 2004.But after some time had passed, I began to want to be happy. I didn't want to go on living the way I was, feeling like the walking dead. I began to yearn for some pleasure in my life.... and I found it!I call what I learned cultivating happiness.I wrote about cultivating happiness in my Happiness BookNow I won't lie to you and say, that I miss Hannah any the less.Or that I don't still have sad days.But I can truthfully say that my life today is a rich tapestry.There is love and laughter now.There are new hopes and dreams.That all consuming emptiness is gone.

Have you ever just sat and watched the water of a spring or a small river? Have you noticed how it meets an obstacle and just flows round it? It doesn't stop as if to say 'hey, what are you doing in my path?' The water simply flows around the obstacle, sometimes even separating into two channels and joining up with itself on the other side. The water doesn't fight with what is like we humans do. It accepts. Then it moves on. We all have obstacles in our lives of one kind or another. We can fight with what is or we can go around it and continue on our way. We all can find a way or make a way.

No lasting change can happen in our lives unless we begin to have compassion for ourselves. This world is full of people who do not know how to be kind to themselves. Compassion begins like everything, with small actions. Eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired and put on an extra sweater when you are cold. Some will read this and say 'but my problems are so much bigger than this!' My answer is 'yes, they probably are!' Still eat when you are hungry, keep warm and sleep when you are tired. Because there is no problem that cannot be made worse by not taking care of yourself.Next, don't tell yourself nasty things about yourself. Even if your mother or father told you they were true. Maybe they were wrong. In fact, most probably they were wrong. Instead treat yourself the way you treat those you love; with kindness, thoughtfullness and gentleness. Give yourself a break. Do it once, twice and then again and again.

Yesterday, as I sat at my desk, the sun was shining through the window. I felt such a deep feeling of peace and contentment. In the distance the mountains flow down to the sea. I cannot see the waves from my window but I know that they are always there. The waves ebb and flow no matter what people do. The waves take the rocks and make grains of sand out of them. The waves take broken bottles and make smooth pebbles I can hold without cutting my hand.I spent hours as a child, walking on the beach, watching the waves.I felt like one of those bottles, broken and cast aside.I was almost thirty before I began to see that the waves of pain had also made a smooth, shiny pebble out of me. The sharp edges of bitterness had been worn away. The salt water had washed off all the muck and dirt. The imperfections make the glass the pebble that it is. And so it is with me.What has time and tide made of you?

There are so many ways to tell the truth.

We can tell the truth faintly or firmly.We can tell the truth in anger.We can tell it to wound just like we have been wounded.Sometimes, we can open our mouths and unexpectedly out pops the truth.We can tell the truth without any real support.We can tell the truth before we even know what the consequences will be.Certainly we can tell the truth before we are ready.Sometimes we can be manipulated into telling the truth.Our truth can be used to further someone else's agenda.I have probably told the truth in all the ways listed above.

But there is another way of telling the truth.

We can tell the truth with compassion for ourselves.We can tell the truth from a place of strength and integrity.We can tell the truth by our own choice.We can tell the truth because it is what it is.This, I believe, is the ultimate freedom.

For years, I thought truth was something only someone else could give me.Then, one day I realised, only I could give this truth to myself!